Best Personal Finance Apps

Personal Finance Apps That Will Save You Thousands

Let’s face it: Many of us have become smartphone addicts, and apps are our crack cocaine. From customizing our own radio station, to finding good drink recipes, to driving a tiny helicopter through a cave, apps are sucking up more and more of our free time while giving us countless hours of enjoyment.

But apps aren’t just time wasters. Apps can help us lose weight, stay on a fitness regime and, amazingly enough, get our finances in order. Before taking a look at our favorite personal finance apps, you may want to take a moment and think about whether or not using a personal finance app is right for you. Do any of these sound familiar?

You’re trying to keep track of your spending by shoving your receipts into your wallet, but now it’s as fat as a chicken salad sandwich on a kaiser roll, and it barely fits into your jeans.

You made a New Year’s resolution to keep track of your expenses in a notebook, but when you opened it recently, there’s still only one entry. And it’s from January 3rd. Of 2003.

You’re spending is so out of control that members of the Tea Party are now picketing in front of your house.

If any of these hit close to home, you might want to check out the following personal finance apps.

Pros: Getting really good at automatically “reading” your transactions and putting them into the right budget categories.

Cons: Advertising. They're free, so they have to make money somehow. You’re going to get pitches on credit cards, brokerage accounts, online banking, etc.

you want to:

Figure out the true cost of a purchase before you buy it on credit

Debt Dog

iPhone How many times have you bought an item because it was on sale and then used your credit card to purchase it? You thought you were saving 30%, but if you didn’t pay off your credit card right away, the interest pushed up the actual cost of the item to 150% of the original price. If you’re the kind of mathematically challenged individual who makes these mistakes, then you might want to check out Debt Dog. Debt Dog is a calculator that can help you figure out what an item will cost you before you buy it using your credit card.Pros: Simplicity. It will raise your awareness about deficit spending (aka buying things you don’t have the cash for right now). Can we get one for the federal government?

Cons: Maybe a little too simple. You can’t customize it to your card to include annual fees, late payment fees, whether your card bases your interest on a 30- or a 31-day month, etc.

We have a few more of the best personal finance apps out there for the average guy and his iPhone...